From main entry to work authority record: development of a cataloguing fundamental Available to Purchase

Explores the confusion between main entry and main entry heading and attempts to finally lay the ghost to rest by shifting the emphasis onto the problem of work authority – the problem with which the theory of main entry is actually concerned. Concentrating on the second function of the catalogue as defined in the “Paris principles” of 1961, the paper examines various contributions on main entry including those delivered at the Toronto conference on AACR in 1997. Proposes the establishment of a global work authority file in which each individual work is primarily identified by a modified version of the uniform title, a departure which would restore the title (as opposed to the author) as principal identifier of the work.